IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nat/natcom/v13y2022i1d10.1038_s41467-022-32510-x.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Catalytic oxidation of polystyrene to aromatic oxygenates over a graphitic carbon nitride catalyst

Author

Listed:
  • Ruochen Cao

    (Peking University)

  • Mei-Qi Zhang

    (Peking University)

  • Chaoquan Hu

    (State Key Laboratory of Multiphase Complex Systems, Institute of Process Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences
    Nanjing IPE Institute of Green Manufacturing Industry)

  • Dequan Xiao

    (University of New Haven)

  • Meng Wang

    (Peking University)

  • Ding Ma

    (Peking University)

Abstract

The continuous increase in manufacturing coupled with the difficulty of recycling of plastic products has generated huge amounts of waste plastics. Most of the existing chemical recycling and upcycling methods suffer from harsh conditions and poor product selectivity. Here we demonstrate a photocatalytic method to oxidize polystyrene to aromatic oxygenates under visible light irradiation using heterogeneous graphitic carbon nitride catalysts. Benzoic acid, acetophenone, and benzaldehyde are the dominant products in the liquid phase when the conversion of polystyrene reaches >90% at 150 °C. For the transformation of 0.5 g polystyrene plastic waste, 0.36 g of the aromatic oxygenates is obtained. The reaction mechanism is also investigated with various characterization methods and procedes via polystyrene activation to form hydroxyl and carbonyl groups over its backbone via C–H bond oxidation which is followed by oxidative bond breakage via C–C activation and further oxidation processes to aromatic oxygenates.

Suggested Citation

  • Ruochen Cao & Mei-Qi Zhang & Chaoquan Hu & Dequan Xiao & Meng Wang & Ding Ma, 2022. "Catalytic oxidation of polystyrene to aromatic oxygenates over a graphitic carbon nitride catalyst," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-10, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:nat:natcom:v:13:y:2022:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-022-32510-x
    DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-32510-x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-32510-x
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1038/s41467-022-32510-x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Laura Wimberger & Gervase Ng & Cyrille Boyer, 2024. "Light-driven polymer recycling to monomers and small molecules," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 15(1), pages 1-18, December.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nat:natcom:v:13:y:2022:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-022-32510-x. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.